


In Your Image

by Blackbird Song (Blackbird_Song)



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Big Bang Challenge, Character Study, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-17
Updated: 2011-10-17
Packaged: 2017-10-24 17:40:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/266139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blackbird_Song/pseuds/Blackbird%20Song
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack and Ianto sitting in a tree: Torchwood-style</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Your Image

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the tw_bigbang challenge of 2011. Many thanks to my husband for the beta, and to Smirnoffmule for suggestions on Welsh namecalling/nicknames in school.

>   
> 
> 
> _I'm all the way up here. It's so brilliant! Dad told me just to keep looking up, and look where I am! I can see the water from here. "I can see the sea," I shout._
> 
> _And then I look at you. You're all the way down there and everything's all – sort of wobbly. "Come up, Rhi! It's beautiful!"_
> 
> _But you're shouting. "Come down here! You'll fall!"_
> 
> _"No, I won't! It's lovely!"_
> 
> _"Mam? Mam!"_
> 
> _"What is – Ianto! Oh, God, Ianto! Come down from there! Oh, God!"_

"Iahnto!"

Ianto sucks in a huge draft of air, hurtling through time to the sofa in the Hub. He winces when he realises the spring is poking him between the ribs. "Sorry...."

"Ianto, don't move!"

Ianto freezes. He always does when Jack sounds like that.

And then a breeze catches him – one that smells of wood and moss, and hasn't the slightest trace of indoors about it.

"Don't open your eyes!" Jack sounds far away.

And there is a rustling sound – like dry leaves in a breeze.

"Jack...." His voice sounds dry, feels odd.

"Ianto, I need you to listen to me, and stay very still." Jack sounds ragged, upset.

"Listenin'...."

"Do you remember where you are?"

"I'm in the Hub ... on the sofa. Aren't I?"

"No!" Jack sounds so _vehement_. And worried.

"All right...." Ianto resets himself to deal with whatever's troubling Jack. "Where am I, then?"

"First off, promise me you won't open your eyes."

"Either something horrible's going to eat me, or Owen's come back from the dead, again. Or I'm about to fall off a cliff."

There is a laugh that rings a bit of a sob, and is both hollow and full enough to make Ianto really afraid.

"I'm up high, aren't I?" And then he can feel it – the breeze curling around him, and whatever he's lying on swaying underneath. "JACK!"

"You're all right, you're all right! Just ... don't move!"

Ianto doesn't need to hear the unspoken plea that suffuses Jack's voice. "Not moving," he promises. "But why is that sofa spring poking into me?"

"Ianto, I'm trying to get to you, but I'm stuck. Can you feel your arms?"

Something tells Ianto that his blood should run cold at that, so it does. And he can't. "Not really."

"Try wiggling your fingers...."

He tries. "Nothing."

"Try again!"

The urge to roll his eyes is huge, but Ianto keeps them firmly closed and does as his Captain bids. This time— "Aa-ha! Oh! Pins and needles." For once, it really feels exactly as though he were being stabbed by thousands of them.

"Better than nothing!" Jack's sound-smile is too fraught for comfort. "Can you feel what you're holding on to?"

Ianto focuses as though he's trying to open an impossible jar. Then he feels the colour drain from his face. "Tree...."

"Yeah. Eyes closed!"

"They are," Ianto mutters. Wild aliens couldn't get him to open them, now.

There is nothing from where Jack's voice has just been.

"Jack?"

There is a rustle followed by a thunderous creaking, as though one of the main limbs is being bent in ways it shouldn't. And then it sounds as though the tree is moaning, which makes Ianto wonder if he should be holding on or jumping off.

"JACK?"

"Com—OW! Coming! Dammit, stop pushing me!"

"Sorry." The sting of it sends a surge of blood through Ianto that makes it clear that the spring poking between his ribs isn't poking him; it's impaling him. And it isn't a spring, of course ... there are no springs in trees.

"Not you," Jack says from somewhere above. "Ianto?"

>   
> 
> 
> _"Ianto! Ianto Jones, you come down out of that tree, right this minute! Oh, God! Rhi, go up after him!"_
> 
> _"I can't climb up there!"_
> 
> _"You let him up there, now you fetch him down!"_
> 
> _"Mam, I can't!" Rhi sounds so scared._
> 
> _"I can do it, Mam! See? I'm coming down. Rhi can't climb—ouch!" I've scratched my finger on the tree bark._
> 
> _"Be careful, Ianto! Oh, God...."_
> 
> _Mam sounds even more scared than Rhi. It must be dangerous, being up high. I look down. So far! And it's wobbling. I feel sick. I have to get down...._

"Ianto!"

"Here, Sir...."

"Don't move!"

"Yes, Sir."

"'Sir'? I thought we'd moved beyond that." The voice seems very close. Worried, perhaps.

A breeze wafts a scent by his nose. "Jack...."

There's something on his shoulder. Something live, squeezing. "Yeah. Ianto?"

"Not movin', Sir...."

"Okay.... That's good. Let me just...."

Ianto feels Jack's hand move over his body, dangerously close to—

"AAGH!"

"Sorry. Would you get that stick out of him?!"

Ianto means to ask Jack who he's talking to, but all that comes out is, "Tree...."

And then there is movement underneath him.

Jack's arm comes around him and finds his hand. "I am so sorry. Grab my hand, I've got you."

Ianto's fingers are barely fumbling through Jack's when pain sears through him and he turns into lightning....

>   
> 
> 
> _"Mam says it's too high!" I think it's too high._
> 
> _"Bollocks! You're having a good time, aren't you?" Dad gives me another push, not as hard as the last time. I can feel he's angry._
> 
> _"Yes, Dad."_
> 
> _"Right, then, what'll it be? Like Mam wants it?" He pushes me again, all pointy fingers._
> 
> _"Ouch!" It hurts, but I don't go very far._
> 
> _"Or like this?" His hand is on my back, all big and warm, and he pushes me harder, and it doesn't hurt._
> 
> _The wind in my face is cool, and my bum almost leaves the swing. It's almost like ... I'm flying! "Like this!"_
> 
> _Dad pushes me higher. I can feel his pride in the strength of his hand._
> 
> _Higher...._
> 
> _"Too high!" I'm above the bar._
> 
> _"Nonsense!" He pushes me again._
> 
> _I'll go upside down. "Too high!!"_
> 
> _"Rubbish! It'll be fun, you'll see!" He pushes me too hard._
> 
> _I try to stop it – stop him._
> 
> _The swing twists._
> 
> _My hands are slippery._
> 
> _I'm flying. Everything goes all white...._

"Ianto?" Jack sounds upset.

He also sounds very close.

"Stay with me, Ianto...." It is more of a plea than Ianto had expected to hear.

"I'm here." And then he realises that Jack's holding him, and he's not quite sure how he's configured. "Can I open my eyes?" Only it comes out as a sort of word slurry.

Jack's hand – warm and big – is on his face. The other hand is gripping his shoulder tightly, and is probably attached to the arm that's bracing his back against—

Ianto flails, grasping for anything to prevent the fall that he _knows_ is going to happen.

"Hey. Hey! I've got you!" Jack's voice is so close. "You're only going to fall if you take me with you. You don't want that, do you?" He sounds so scared.

Ianto clutches Jack's arm – the one attached to the hand that's still on his face. He focuses and tries to breathe, which hurts. "Am I still bleeding?" He didn't expect it to sound so raspy.

"Not if I bandaged you right."

"That's ... reassuring. You had a first-aid kit?"

"I improvised."

Ianto opens his eyes in horror, and finds himself looking nearly straight down.

"You're okay." Jack is holding him like a vice. "I've got you."

"Jack ... could you stop ... rocking me?"

"I thought you liked that."

Ianto should feel a flush and doesn't. "Am I bleeding?"

"You were."

Ianto tries to move his head to see Jack's face, but it feels extremely heavy – "Jack? Could I have my head back?"

Jack's hands slide away. "Sorry...." It's a sort of sobbed breath that makes Ianto want to kiss Jack or slap some sense into him.

"Hey... Can't be that bad...."

Jack laughs, sort of.

"I stopped bleedin', right?"

"Yeah."

"No bones broken?"

"No."

"Still got my legs?"

Jack sighs, and Ianto can feel him chuckling. "All three of them."

Ianto rolls his eyes. And then feels the pressure bandage around his torso. "You checked, didn't you?"

Jack shrugs. "Had to bandage you up."

"How bad is it?"

"You got lucky."

Ianto shifts and wishes he hadn't. He sees stars of pain, which doesn't help his vertigo.

Jack's hands soothe him, hold him steady as he shivers from pain and then shudders from more of it. "The ... spring ... went in at an angle under your ribs. Didn't puncture the chest cavity. You've had some bleeding—" Jack's voice goes a bit funny, and he takes a fast breath and clears his throat. "But you made it."

"Is that why you're crying?"

Jack laughs, though it's more of a sob.

"Can I move?"

"Okay, but first—"

Ianto starts to shift again, only to be held in place by Jack's hands.

" _First,_ you have to know you have a pressure bandage over a half-inch puncture hole where a six-inch ... thorn went in just over your liver."

Ianto feels very badly sick and starts to understand his faintness. "How much did I bleed?"

"Lost about a pint."

"Imperial, or American?"

"Imperial."

Ianto swallows and moves his hand enough to see it. "Bit white...."

>   
> 
> 
> _Everything's white. I'm in hospital. My leg hurts so much, like it's burning on the inside._
> 
> _"Ianto? Can you hear me?"_
> 
> _I don't know who it is. "Yes," I say, but it sounds funny._
> 
> _"How do you feel?"_
> 
> _"It ..._ hurts _." I blink and the walls come into focus, but the voice is nowhere to be seen. 'Who are you?' I want to ask, but it doesn't come out._
> 
> _"Well, that's to be expected, luv."_
> 
> _The ceiling's white, and it's moving. I'm being pushed somewhere on my back. I want to see where—_
> 
> _"Stop it!"_
> 
> _There's a hand on my chest._
> 
> _"You'll fall off and hurt yourself, if you keep doing that! Like you fell off the swing."_
> 
> _"Didn't ... Dad ... pushed me...."_
> 
> _"Did he?"_
> 
> _I'm crying. Can't feel my tears. How am I crying and there's no tears?_
> 
> _"There, there, luv.... I'm sure he didn't mean to, right?"_
> 
> _I have all this stuff in my head. Stories and stories whirling in my mouth, and I can't speak. And it would be bad..._

"...it would be so bad?"

"Who're you talking to?"

"Ianto?"

Ianto feels Jack's kiss – fervent – on his forehead.

"You wouldn't believe me."

"Torchwood."

"You still wouldn't." Jack sounds even less steady than he did before Ianto faded out again.

"Can I sit up, yet?"

"You'll go unconscious!"

"I hurt."

"Oh. Okay, can you move?"

Ianto fumbles and finds Jack's thigh.

"Good! How about your legs? Can you feel 'em?"

Ianto flexes his toes and then his ankles. "Yeah, except my right foot's asleep."

"Okay, I've got you. Keep your eyes closed and just ... use me and the tree. But remember I've got to hold you, or you're going to fall."

"What about you?"

"Don't worry about me, I'm—"

"I know you can't die!" He regrets it the instant he says it.

"I'm anchored," Jack says, seething with patience.

"Oh. Yes, of course. Right, then." Ianto makes sure to squeeze his eyes shut, and then he grasps and pulls and twists as Jack helps.

"Almost there...."

Ianto groans. Though Jack's hands never go near the place that hurts the most, the pain is enough to make things go white. He grits his teeth and refuses to faint again....

>   
> 
> 
> _"What's the matter, Ianto? You going to faint?"_
> 
> _"No, he's gone red! He's going to cry!"_
> 
> _"Aww, poor ickle Yan-Yan!"_
> 
> _I keep walking, like Mam said._
> 
> _"What's the matter, Yan-Yan? You don't want to play with us?"_
> 
> _"We don't want him playing with us. He can't kick straight!"_
> 
> _"Lost the goal, and everything!"_
> 
> _They're too close to me. I hate it._
> 
> _"He doesn't like us, Jez! That's why he missed that kick."_
> 
> _"Yeah! He's working for the other side!"_
> 
> _"Better run away, Yan-Yan! Oh, wait.... You can't run, either, can you? Useless and a traitor."_
> 
> _"Let's teach him a lesson!"_
> 
> _Jeremy trips me and Steven knocks me down. Jonny kicks me._
> 
> _Then they're all kicking me._
> 
> _It hurts so much. I keep my arms over my head, but they keep kicking me. Someone with a pointed boot keeps going for my side and shouting...._

"IANTO!"

Ianto sucks in a loud, aborted breath and cries out. "Ah! Huhh! Shit, that hurts!"

"Sorry, but you were twitching and you almost took us both down."

Perhaps it's the adrenalin from the startlement, but Ianto feels more present. "Right. Time for me to have a look 'round."

Jack's arms tighten a bit around Ianto, making him aware that he's leaning side-on into Jack, and that he's well supported by at least three of Jack's limbs.

He's not entirely sure how he feels about this until he blinks the blur from his eyes and looks out. And then down. "Shit!" He's breathing rapidly, hurting with every intake and not caring, because he's alive and Jack has a grip on him.

"Easy," Jack soothes. "I really don't want you fainting again."

"Can't promise anything...." The world spins in a completely different direction to its axis.

"Okay. Remember how I taught you about vertigo?"

"Pain."

"Yeah, I get that, but you gotta separate that out. See that hill over there? Straight in front of you?"

"Ground's straight in front of me. And a hell of a long way down...."

Jack shifts subtly, enough to move Ianto into a straighter position. "Follow my point." He lifts his hand – the right hand that's not supporting Ianto's weight as much and that was too close to the pain, anyway – and slowly stretches it forwards.

"Can't."

"Ianto." Jack's voice is much softer. "Hey..." And then the backs of his fingers give Ianto's cheek a gentle rub.

Ianto never fails to fall for that one.

"Good." Jack's voice is still soft, open. "Now follow my hand and look ... straight ahead ... there. See it now?"

"Yeah." Ianto swallows.

"Just keep your eyes on that until the dizziness goes away."

"Can't I just faint, instead?"

"No! Not this time. That must have been a hell of a dream you were having! Wanna tell me about it?" It is not so much request as order.

"You want to tell me who you were talking to earlier?"

"How about you tell me yours and I'll tell you mine?"

"Deer buttin' antlers," Ianto mutters.

"Just keep your eyes on that hill and start talking."

"Oh, you know, just the usual ... alien blowjobs gone horribly wrong...."

"Giving or receiving?"

A wave of nausea rocks Ianto and he can't speak.

"Sorry." Jack squeezes Ianto's shoulder. There is affection in it, but it's also a prompt.

"Nightmare." Ianto swallows, clenching his teeth for a moment. "You sure this vertigo technique works?"

"Yeah. Now tell me about that dream."

Ianto feels himself blanch. "It wasn't.... Why do you want to know, Jack? D'you think I betrayed you? Dreamt about Lisa taking over the Hub?"

Jack stiffens, and for one terrifying second, Ianto worries that he'll let go. "Okay, I earned that," he says after too long a pause.

"Wasn't a dream." Ianto stares fixedly at the hill.

"A memory, then."

"Yeah. Only I'm living it, like when it first happened."

Jack shrugs.

Ianto grasps at him.

"Sorry." Jack adjusts his grip, making it clear that he's not letting go. "So what were you reliving?"

"School."

"Oh."

"They were kicking me. I was trying to protect myself. At least they didn't get my head."

After a long moment, Jack kisses Ianto's temple. It lasts for longer than is customary.

Ianto wants to lean into it, but doesn't. Scaring Jack away isn't on his agenda, even without his fear of falling. "Who were you talking to?"

"You sure you're ready for this?"

"Again, Torchwood."

"The tree."

"Ah."

"No, but really. When have you seen a thousand-foot tree in Wales?"

Ianto feels whatever colour might have been in his face drain. "So the stories are true, then."

"I thought you might have a clue when the thing grabbed you and swung you around."

"I ... don't remember that happening."

"Probably just as well. There's a reason I don't go bungee jumping."

Ianto bites his tongue.

"And don't worry – we're only five hundred feet up."

"Five ... I don't suppose I should look up, should I?"

"In your case? Probably not right now."

Ianto looks up, anyway. "Oh, God...."

"Told you! And it's Gwint."

"Gwint?"

"The tree. He's called Gwint. Not God."

Ianto just blinks until he is sure he'll remain conscious. "My name is Ianto Jones. I work for Torchwood, and I'm sitting in Treebeard."

"Not Treebeard; Gwint." Jack looks up, causing Ianto to look into his face, which is worried.

"What? Gwint hates Tolkien?"

"Yeah, pretty much. It's complicated."

"It always is," says Ianto. "So," he continues, putting on the best fake smile he can manage, "how do we get down from Gwint?"

"You can climb," says Jack, a bit frostily. "I ... well, that's really complicated."

All of a sudden, Ianto realises that much of what he's been hearing in Jack's voice has been fear. "How is it complicated?"

"Remember when I said I was anchored?"

"Um...."

"Just before you blacked out this last time?"

"Oh. Yes?"

"It's not in any way that we train at Torchwood."

When Jack shifts this time, Ianto is looking at him and sees the grimace and notices, for the first time, that his face is sheet white. "You mean...."

"In through the lower back, wrapped twice around the spine and back out again."

"But _why?_ I mean, weren't you just ... over there, somewhere?"

"You were hurt. I had to get to you. This was the only way Gwint would let me."

"Gwint ... he stabbed me, didn't he?"

"Sort of."

"'Sort of'?"

"Yeah. Look, I'm sorry, but I don't have much time, so you've gotta listen. If you aren't ready to climb down, you'll have to hang onto me and Gwint. Best way, you turn your back to me and let me hold you while you straddle this branch. That way, if rigor mortis sets in, you get a really solid anchor—"

"That's horrible. And when you wake up, you flail and push me off."

"That's not fair." The pain in Jack's fading voice is almost more than Ianto can bear. Almost.

Ianto kisses Jack because he can't _not_. "I know. I'm sorry."

Jack, blue-white, starts to smile, and dies.

Ianto kisses Jack's head as it falls forward onto his shoulder. And then he snakes his arm around Jack's back to find two woody, vine-like things, each about an inch thick, connecting Jack to the trunk of the tree. Underneath them, behind and – upon further examination – under Jack, there is sticky, coagulating wetness. Ianto doesn't need to see it to know what it is, but he pulls his fingers from it and looks, anyway, because Jack would want him to.

It's still warm, the drop that dripped onto his fingers from where the tree is impaling Jack. Warm and wet and healthy. A perfect shade of red as it drips from Ianto's fingers onto Jack's hand.

The perfect red to show off the perfect white.

"That should be inside you," Ianto rasps. "Then you'd be a better colour." _A more normal colour._ A more _Jack_ colour – all alive and perfect.

>   
> 
> 
> _"That's brilliant!" Nicky takes the red shirt I was examining and puts it on._
> 
> _It looks awful on him, but I'm not supposed to notice._
> 
> _"What's the matter? You look like you just kicked an own goal!"_
> 
> _"I don't play football."_
> 
> _"Oh, yeah, that's right. You don't play much of anything, do you?"_
> 
> _"Bit of rugby, now and then."_
> 
> _"You any good?"_
> 
> _I shrug. "Got a try last match." I don't need to tell him that it was completely accidental._
> 
> _"That's not bad, is it?" He looks at the price tag. "Twenty quid," he mutters. He leans in, a little too close. "Do us a favour, right? Create a diversion so I can have this shirt."_
> 
> _I feel myself go pale._
> 
> _"Come on, Iaz. I promised Wendy I'd have a new one for tonight, and I don't have the money. Besides, you're not the one taking it, right?"_
> 
> _It's wrong. It's so wrong, but I can see his point. The thing is made in China and costs the chain about two quid, and isn't even worth that. Besides, the man who owns this shop is a pervert, so it doesn't matter. I nod._
> 
> _"Thanks, mate, you're a star!" Nicky turns towards the door._
> 
> _"Hang on!" I reach him before anyone can hear. "Price tags."_
> 
> _"Oh!"_
> 
> _I pull the one from the collar; he gets the one on the sleeve. "Now give me your old one."_
> 
> _He shoves his old shirt into my hands. I stuff it into my schoolbag and he claps me on the back._
> 
> _I nod and turn to the sales girl._
> 
> _Nicky exits the shop whilst I'm talking to her._
> 
> _When I leave, I am arrested._

There is a huge sound and flailing from Jack.

Ianto grasps Jack's hand and pulls it close around him, careful to avoid his own wound. "It's all right," he murmurs. "I'm here."

Jack grips Ianto, panting.

"It's all right, Jack." Ianto kisses his cheek because Jack's scared and the angle's too awkward to do anything else.

Jack's grip is too tight. "Ianto.... You still here?"

Ianto feels himself melt inside at the desperation in Jack's voice. "Always."

Jack's grip shifts and becomes an embrace. "Thank you."

"Don't really have much choice, do I?" He means it as a quip, but it doesn't sound right.

"I know." Jack's kiss is longer and sweeter than a kiss on the temple should be, and his breath against Ianto's ear removes all thought of anything else. "I'm sorry."

"What for?"

"Getting you into this mess. If I'd been here when—"

"Don't." It's not harsh. He'd wanted it to be, but it didn't come out that way. "It's not your fault."

"Yeah, it is."

"Okay, maybe it is, a bit."

Jack smiles against Ianto's cheek. "Thought you might see it that way."

Ianto allows himself a slight relaxation of cheek muscles and starts to pull Jack's arm a bit tighter around. The pain is blinding and a bit nauseating.

"Easy," Jack soothes.

"Can you kiss it and make it better?"

Jack laughs and kisses Ianto briefly on the lips.

"That's lovely, but not quite what I meant."

"Sorry. I've died a few too many times, today." Jack winces, colour changing.

"What's wrong?"

"That vine thing inside me just got bigger again."

"Shit! What does Gwint want with you?"

There is a pause. "He wants me dead."

Ianto nods. "Why?"

"I love how you take that for granted!"

"Just as well. What did you do to Gwint?"

"A long time ago—"

"In a galaxy far, far away...."

"A long time ago," Jack all but snarls, "I helped kill his people."

Something falls inside Ianto. "Are you going to tell me about it?"

"Well, when you say it like that, I suppose you're entitled."

Ianto meets Jack's eyes, glare for glare.

"Yeah, you're right." Jack sighs, pain interrupting the exhale. "We were on a Level 5 training mission. A search and destroy on a forested planet. They're used a lot as hiding places, especially by chlorophyll-dependent species."

"I think I can see where this is going...."

Jack shakes his head. "It gets worse."

"Lovely."

"We never knew what to expect on these missions. All we knew was that if it gave us the readings we were looking for, we were supposed to target and obliterate it, no questions asked."

"So you didn't think twice about ... incinerating ... trees?"

"No."

"Because they're a chlorophyll-dependent species?"

"Because they were just part of the plant life—" Jack goes grey-white, screaming as he starts to levitate slowly up the trunk of the tree.

Ianto stares in horror for all of a second. "Let him finish the story!" he shouts.

Jack's levitation halts. His face is slack with pain.

"Let him explain! There had to have been a reason...."

"Ianto...." Jack's voice is barely audible. "Don't.... Gwint ... help...." His hands slip from Ianto.

Ianto steadies himself without thought, staring at Jack. "Help him!"

Jack dies.

"You got what you wanted...." Ianto fixes his resolve and reaches up for Jack's hand. "You got what you wanted!" he shouts, though he doesn't know where to aim it. "Now let him go!"

Jack remains where he died – a foot higher up the trunk than when he'd been sitting on it.

"Please don't come back yet." Ianto squeezes Jack's hand, knowing his words are pointless. Jack always takes longer to come back when he's died recently. He lets go of Jack's hand and looks further up, as though he'd find another face – one that belonged to a tree.

It's a long way up. And there is no face. There is only a dizzying array of leaves and branches that seems to disappear into the sky. "Just my luck to get stuck with Jack on the fucking beanstalk." Ianto sets his mind to looking down, turning himself on the wide limb as best he can. "Gwint, I mean you no harm. I just want to find out how to talk to you." He starts to bend so that he can lie along the limb and peer down the trunk. The thought is terrifying. "Just so you know, I can't come back like Jack."

It feels so stupid to be talking to a tree, and even worse to have to trust a plant that's trying to kill one's lover. But Ianto's Torchwood, and this is business, so it doesn't matter. He never did have much dignity, anyway.

>   
> 
> 
> _"Stand still, Ianto! You'll get a pin in your foot!"_
> 
> _"Why isn't Dad doing this?"_
> 
> _"Because making a dress is completely different from tailoring. Now hold still!"_
> 
> _"Yeah, but he has a shop and a room with no windows!" I look over to the window for the third time to make sure the curtain is shut._
> 
> _"He has a sewing machine in a workroom, and you'd be seen by dozens of other people." Mum sticks another pin in the hem._
> 
> _"Wouldn't have to go to school with them tomorrow." I think of Jonny and Steven. They'd call me 'faggot', for sure. My side still hurts. "Why does it have to be _green?_ "_
> 
> _"Because that's Rhi's favourite colour this year, and it's her birthday." Mam sticks another pin in. "Turn...."_
> 
> _I turn a bit, and that's when Dad walks in. My face gets hot._
> 
> _"Nice shade of green, Ianto! Goes well with your face. Reminds me of Christmas!"_
> 
> _"Leave it, Gareth! At least Ianto can keep a secret, unlike Rhi's friends."_
> 
> _Dad stops smiling and gives me one of those looks I hate. "He keeps too many secrets, that one."_
> 
> _"Oh, stop it! You make him sound like MI-5!"_
> 
> _"He'll be lucky if he does that well." Dad turns away and leaves the room._
> 
> _It's gone cold and grey, and Mam isn't happy, anymore. "Don't mind him, love. He's had a bad day at work, is all."_
> 
> _"He's always having bad days at work." I try to keep it quiet, but it comes out anyway._
> 
> _Mam goes very still. I think she's going to hit me, but she starts pinning again. "It's not easy for him, you know. You should try speaking to him, maybe listening once in a while."_

Ianto presses himself as close as possible to the tree limb he's on. He hates the idea of looking down in search of a set of ears. He doesn't even know what he's looking for.

As he clings to the limb, he imagines he hears something within it – sort of a liquid susurrus, as though he could hear blood running through a vein. It's idiotic, of course. Without a stethoscope, one can't hear—

"I'm a bloody idiot," he mutters. He shifts his weight enough to reach into his trouser pocket – and really, if this is the kind of work that he's going to have to keep doing, perhaps suits aren't always the best things to wear on the job. The movement hurts like hell, especially when the pressure bandage slips out of place and his shirt comes untucked, exposing his wounded skin to air it doesn't want. He doesn't bother to fix it, because he can't. Both his hands tremble as he digs down to find the device he's carried for the past fortnight.

It isn't there.

"Fuck!"

The tree leaves are suddenly very still, making Ianto aware that they hadn't been. That there had been a breeze. That he still feels it on his face. He doesn't look down to see the tops of the other trees nearby. He knows they are affected.

"Erm... I'm sorry for the swear?"

The leaves don't move.

Ianto realises that he swore straight into the bark of the branch. He sighs and puts his face back down. "I'm sorry for the swear!" He peeks up at the leaves.

Still nothing.

He twists to get himself into a better position, pulling the wound in his side enough to feel its path into the muscle. He shrieks in agony.

The leaves relax and start moving.

"So it's pain you want." He can barely manage a whisper.

The leaves still, again.

Ianto can hear them. He can't make his eyes focus.

"No." It's Jack's voice.

Ianto looks up, knowing in his bones that it isn't Jack.

Jack is still dead. "Not pain."

"Jack—" Ianto swallows his nausea. "Jack's dead." He blinks, surprised at the emotion he feels at saying that after all these ... months. It feels like years. "Who are you?"

"Gwint."

Ianto is not surprised, but the shivers ruffle his spine, nonetheless. "What do you want?"

"Lonely."

"You're lonely?"

"Lonely."

Jack wakes up, screaming.

There is a terrible moan that starts from Jack's mouth and spreads through the whole tree, shaking leaves and limbs and probably – though Ianto doesn't want his mind to go there – the roots that anchor it.

Ianto clings to the trembling branch, his mind a whirl of pain and fear, even as he worries desperately about Jack.

"Ianto...."

Ianto looks up at Jack, who is holding out his hand. He looks into Jack's eyes and gathers himself together enough to sit up and take it between his own. "Jack...."

"Stay with me." This time, Jack means it for himself.

Something courses through Ianto at that thought. He squeezes Jack's hand, hard. "I'm sorry," he murmurs, searching Jack's eyes. And then he reaches up behind Jack's back and grips as much as he can of the wood binding.

Jack gasps and turns white.

"If you don't want pain, prove it! Let him down!"

Nothing happens.

"Ianto," Jack says, in a pained rasp.

"He doesn't deserve this!"

The tree goes still, leaves rustling just slightly.

"Look, if it's pain you want, take me!"

"No!"

"I betrayed my country! I've chopped down trees! I've burnt wood in a fireplace! I've a low pain threshold! You'll get everything you want out of me. Just let him go!"

"Ianto, no! Gwint, don't let him do this—"

There is a creaking sound and Ianto can feel the wooden shackle start to move downwards, taking Jack with it.

He can also feel Jack's muscles tense and a new ooze of blood seeping onto his hand from Jack's back. It's horrible.

And then Jack is sitting on the branch again, his back to the trunk, eyes fever-bright with pain. "Ianto, I'm guilty of killing his people. He's within his rights—"

"Not to torture you. Not in Wales. Our laws don't permit that!"

Jack looks at him in a way that Ianto never wants to see again. "I have disobeyed those laws so many times, even you couldn't count them all."

It is only then that Ianto notices that the leaves have gone still. He stares Jack in the eye. "I don't care," he growls, even though he does, to the core of his being. "Two wrongs don't make a fucking right!"

Jack grabs Ianto's neck with his last strength and holds his gaze. "And the same applies to you." He kisses Ianto, hard and desperate.

Ianto tastes tears in it. "Jack—"

"Gwint? Help him!" Jack locks eyes with Ianto. "I'm sorry."

Ianto will never forget the feeling of Jack pushing him off the bough.

>   
> 
> 
> _I can't believe I'm late for the meeting with Miss Hart – Yvonne. She insists everyone be on a first-name basis. Dad hated that sort of thing._
> 
> _The lift's just come. I'd best—"Oof! Oh, God! Sorry, I—" Oh, shit, she's_ gorgeous!
> 
> _"No worries, this time. I don't think I've seen you around here, before. Are you new, Mister...?" She's smiling at me. She's smiling at me, and I've forgotten my—_
> 
> _"Jones." Oh, good, there it is. "Ianto Jones." I'm on the floor, picking up folders and scattered papers, and I'm holding up my hand for a goddess to shake. This is mad! "Research."_
> 
> _"Oh, yes! You are new, aren't you? Yvonne told me all about you." She looks at her watch, showing off her beautiful hand. "You're late! She's not going to like that." She shakes her head. "Best hurry up." She turns without shaking my hand, and walks into the lift. "Well, come on, then!"_
> 
> _.I scramble to pick up the last folder, but I'm so flustered that I drop it, and everything else falls out of my hands, again. I can feel the blush starting in my ears. "You'd best go on. This might take a bit."_
> 
> _She shrugs and presses the button, waving as the door closes._
> 
> _It's amazing how efficient I can be when I'm alone. Thirty seconds later, I'm on the lift, headed for Yvonne's office._
> 
> _"Ah, come in, Ianto! Lisa was just telling me that she'd had you clearing up the coffee cups from last night, and I told her that wasn't what you were supposed to be doing."_
> 
> _I can smell her perfume from the door – the goddess from the lift. "Oh, er, it's nothing, really. I'm the new boy...."_
> 
> _"And a good liar, as well." Yvonne smiles. "No worries. As long as it's for Torchwood, I'm for it. Ianto Jones, meet Lisa Hallett. She's going to conduct your orientation and serve as your temporary supervisor. Now, let's see those reports I asked you to fetch...."_
> 
> _As I hand over the reports, I can't help feeling like I'm falling for Lisa –_ tall _Lisa – head over heels. It's a bit like that feeling I had on the swing before Dad pushed too hard, but much better. I think I'm going to like it, here. I'm just glad my suit's a bit loose...._

Ianto's fall is broken far earlier than he'd expected by something nearly soft and quite springy.

Jack is screaming above, and Ianto isn't as sure about saving him, anymore, even if he did push Ianto knowingly towards this ... nest?

For a terrifying moment, Ianto thinks of the size of bird it would have taken to build a nest big enough to hold the full length and breadth of a six-foot man, but then his fingers find a floor woven from living branches and rustling leaves. "Gwint?"

The nest moves up and down, once.

"Ohhhhh, that's weird!"

Jack screams again.

Ianto's face down on whatever it is that's holding him, and he's none too sure of its strength or configuration. Swearing silently at Torchwood, Jack and all that brought him to this moment, he forces his eyes to open and focus where his fingers are latched onto the weave of branches.

He is relieved to find that he can't see much through it. He grasps the surface with both hands and asks, "Are you going to drop me?"

The platform moves once from side to side.

"Oh.... Thank God I don't get seasick." _Just vertigo._ "Am I safe to move?"

There is a small pause, and then the platform moves up and down.

"Right." Ianto turns over, and sees Jack about twenty feet above him. "Jack?"

"Here...."

"Did you know this nest was here?"

"No. But I knew Gwint would protect you."

Ianto is glad that it's quiet up here, because Jack is barely audible. "Why?"

"Because...." Jack dies, again.

"This is like a bad fucking movie," Ianto mutters. "So you're not going to drop me?"

Nothing happens.

"What's the matter, did you suddenly go deaf?"

Nothing.

Ianto remembers that his mouth was in contact with the bark of the tree when he got through, before. He turns back over, careful to avoid lying on his injured side. "Never thought I'd have to kiss a tree and talk to it at the same time." He places his mouth on a barky bit of weave. "You're not going to drop me?" He clutches the floor so that the reply doesn't propel him out of the nest.

Nothing.

"Maybe you don't answer the same question twice?"

Nothing happens.

He remembers being very emotional when Gwint replied earlier. He thinks of Jack screaming. "You know Jack can't stay dead, right?"

Nothing.

"Fucking, bloody—" And then he sees it: a leaf, red with blood. And another. Both are on the same stem. Both are soaked in blood. His blood. "You can't communicate with us unless some part of you is ... inside some part of us. That's why you had that stick inside me earlier. I must've fallen on this just right to.... I can't." His wound is aching sickeningly at the thought of it.

"Wait.... There wasn't anything inside me when I was lying on the branch and talking to you. That stick wasn't inside me when you ... nodded. At least not by much. Maybe if I just lie on it and, er, bleed...." He does everything he can to not think about sepsis and hygiene as he places his wound carefully over the small stem all covered with his coagulating blood. "You know that Jack can't stay dead, right?"

The nest moves up and down.

"But you say you don't want pain from us?"

The nest 'nods' again.

"Then why are you hurting Jack?"

"Guilty."

Ianto twists his head enough to catch Jack out of the corner of his eye without breaking contact with Gwint. He ignores the horror of seeing his dead lover's mouth moving in so unnatural a way, of hearing so familiar – beloved – a voice sounding so soulless. "Yes, I know he killed your people, but what are you going to gain if you keep killing a man who can't stay dead?"

"Guilty." This time, Jack doesn't come back after the repeated word.

"You keep saying that, but haven't you seen the good in him? What he's done for this world – for me."

"Guilty."

"Fuck you and your 'guilty'! Jack's the best man I know, and you're hurting him for no reason!"

There is a pause as the leaves all stop moving.

"Angry."

"Yes, I know you're angry, of course you are! I'd be angry, too, if someone killed all my people. Who wouldn't be?"

There is silence. Ianto gets the faint whiff of a sense that Gwint is confused. He looks at Jack, who is still safely dead. "Look.... Jack said you would protect me, but you killed him before he could say why."

Silence.

"Why did Jack say you would protect me?"

"Ianto."

Ianto knows that's not Jack speaking, because his name is pronounced correctly. "You're protecting me because I'm called Ianto?"

"Scared."

"You're scared? You? You're the biggest thing here!"

Silence.

Ianto's mind races back over the conversation. Always look for an advantage....

>   
> 
> 
> _Gwen's always been better than me at talking to people. I'm not much of a talker. Never have been. Rhi covered that enough for both of us, and Dad never did have much to say to me._
> 
> _"It's ... it's a bit like fighting, I suppose," she told me, once. "You always have to look for an advantage. Just find that chink in the armour and wedge yourself in." She looked up at me, then, and I could see why Jack's always been attracted to her. "I love it!" She grinned her gap-toothed grin, the one that simultaneously attracts and scares everyone, and I was very nearly smitten, even though she's not my type._
> 
> _I can't see her mouth, now. Her face is caught in the mercenary's huge hand. Its other hand is constricting her chest. I reckon she has about a minute before it chokes the life out of her, and that's if she took a breath before. "What do you want?"_
> 
> _"Repeating: CooperGwen and HarknessJack."_
> 
> _"For what purpose?"_
> 
> _"Repeating: Samples."_
> 
> _"Samples of what?"_
> 
> _"Planet dominant species."_
> 
> _"What do you plan on doing with them?"_
> 
> _"Client will decide."_
> 
> _"You are killing Gw—Cooper Gwen."_
> 
> _"Untranslatable: Killing."_
> 
> _"Rendering unusable. Destroying. Spoiling!"_
> 
> _"Must not spoil sample."_
> 
> _"Take your hand off her face."_
> 
> _"Untranslatable: Hand. Untranslatable: Face."_
> 
> _Fuck, this thing is thick! I hold up my hand. "Hand." I point to the one it's got wrapped around Gwen's face. "That's your hand." I point to my face. "Face. Humans need it to breathe, or we ... spoil. You have your hand—" I point to it "—on Cooper Gwen's face."_
> 
> _Gwen is starting to lose her battle._
> 
> _"Remove it now! She's starting to spoil!"_
> 
> _It does._
> 
> _Gwen takes in great gulps of air, or tries to._
> 
> _"You're holding Cooper Gwen too tightly. You will break her!"_
> 
> _The mercenary loosens its grip._
> 
> _Gwen gives me a look and I understand when she exaggerates her breathing difficulties._
> 
> _"Still too tight!"_
> 
> _Three of the eleven digits twitch, and that's when Gwen moves, elbowing it in what proves to be a tender spot._
> 
> _It's also when Jack shows up and shoots the thing with the ray gun he finally managed to fix._
> 
> _"Why didn't it dissolve?" I ask._
> 
> _"'Cause we've gotta send it back to its owners. These things are expensive!"_
> 
> _"They're fucking useless!" Gwen brushes herself off, tottering towards us._
> 
> _"Yeah, they are quite thick." I touch her arm, offering support whilst her breathing equalises. Really, I just need to touch her so I know she's all right._
> 
> _"They're status symbols. That works to our advantage, because now I can lure the owners here for a little chat about the Shadow Proclamation's rules on protected planets." Jack looks Gwen up and down. "Are you okay?"_
> 
> _Gwen glares at him. "I'll be fine, thanks to Ianto."_
> 
> _There's something about a bit of genuine praise from Gwen that always makes you feel like you're worth more than you thought you were. And when Jack turns and smiles at me like that, I feel ten foot tall._

No. Not pain. Lonely. Guilty. Angry. Ianto. Scared.

"You don't want pain," Ianto murmurs. It's impossible to believe that, given Jack's predicament. "'Approach the subject initially by accepting what they say at face value.' That'll be hard to do with you torturing Jack!"

"Angry."

"Yes, I got that, thank you!" Ianto takes a breath and forces himself to think. "Lonely, guilty, angry, Ianto, scared.... How did my name get in there?"

"Ianto Jones." Jack's voice is too high and eerily Welsh. He sounds a bit like—

"Mam!" Ianto bites back hard on telling this big, angry, lonely, unaccountably scared tree to stop making his lover imitate his mother, because the other information is overloading his brain. "You know me!"

The nest softens, which makes Ianto flail for the thicker branches at its edges.

"Yessss."

"But ... how? I mean, I don't _do_ trees."

"Small."

"Small...." Ianto's eyes widen. He looks at the leaves and bark, and feels the scratch on his finger as though it were yesterday. "That was you! When I was seven, that was you!"

Gwint begins to sway and the nest curls around a bit, making it feel more like a cup.

Ianto hangs on for dear life. "You're smiling, aren't you?"

"Yes, he is."

"Jack! He knows me! And you knew, didn't you?"

"Yes." Jack is smiling, but obviously in pain.

There are two questions that Ianto wants to ask simultaneously. The one that wins is, "How?"

"As long as we're connected, he knows everything about me and I know everything about him."

Ianto feels the leaf against his wound. "So why don't I?"

Jack looks confused. "You've been talking to him, right?"

"Yeah. Er, sort of."

"'Sort of'?"

"When you're dead. He ... makes your mouth work."

"Oh." Jack changes colour. "Wow...."

"It is a bit odd."

"I bet."

"Made you sound a lot like my mum."

"Really?"

"Yep. So why don't I know everything about Gwint?"

Jack bends enough to peer at Ianto's current position. "Because he doesn't have that thorn inside you, anymore."

"You mean, he has to be—"

"All the way in." Jack grimaces. "Ohh, I shouldn't bend!"

"So I'd be able to talk directly with him if I were impaled on him?"

"You make it sound like a good night!"

"Obviously, you can't be feeling too bad."

"Never underestimate pain as an aphrodisiac."

"Or a skin tone of 'about to die' grey and a voice that sounds like gravel being crushed as proof of interest."

Jack's face changes. "Hey.... Always did love a guy in grey." He's panting, skin stretched tight across his skull, and he turns, eyes unshielded, boring into Ianto. "Charcoal ... pinstripe...." He dies.

"Why did you do that?" Ianto is in tears, shouting it to the universe, not caring who hears, though he knows no one will.

"Sad."

"You killed him because you're sad? Well, I'm sad, too! What if I killed you?" Ianto doesn't even care that his side hurts in a sick, burning way that would make him panic at any other time.

"Angry."

"Well, then, kill me, if you're so fucking angry! You'd be doing me a favour! Go on, throw me out of this fucking nest and let me take my chances!"

"Scared."

"Of course, I'm scared! I'm fucking terrified! I hate heights, but I'd take falling to my death any day over watching you kill Jack one more fucking time!"

There is a long pause of absolute silence during which Ianto makes his rehearsed peace with God, his family, Lisa, everyone who's ever loved him.

"Love."

Something about hearing that word from Jack's dead mouth breaks Ianto altogether.

>   
> 
> 
> _"It's a funny thing about love."_
> 
> _Jack's voice is the last thing I want to hear, right now, whilst I'm focused on Lisa and on trying to remember everything about her and the life we should have had. Would've had, if that bloody power drain hadn't registered on Tosh's fucking screen._
> 
> _"It can brighten your day and make everything feel all right in the world, even when everything is at its worst."_
> 
> _I feel the sofa edge dip as Jack sits next to me. Two feet away, and far too close._
> 
> _"And it can make us do things that we never thought we could do – be the best that we can possibly be – all for the worst reasons in the universe."_
> 
> _I've got long arms. I'm fast. I could punch him on the other side of his face and give him a matching bruise. Not matching. Just below the right eye. Make him ugly. He'd need a third for that. At least I could do that before he retcons me._
> 
> _"And all the best. Sometimes they're the same thing."_
> 
> _That breaks me. I thought I'd finished crying. I was wrong, but I fight the tears. "You want to get on with it?"_
> 
> _"With what?"_
> 
> _"The retcon."_
> 
> _"I'm not retconning you, Ianto."_
> 
> _For a moment, I can't speak. I'd rehearsed this, but it won't come. "I ... have a sister. She's got a husband and two children. I help support them. They don't know about Torchwood. Please ... make my death look like an accident. Let them have a little closure. I don't want them worrying more than they have to, or spending their time and money searching for a body they'll never find. I'll take any method of execution as long as it gives them a body to bury."_
> 
> _"I'm not executing you."_
> 
> _I look at Jack, and don't want to think that I might have been wrong to call him a monster. "Why?"_
> 
> _"Do you think I should?"_
> 
> _I hadn't expected that. "Yes," I answer, more quickly than is sane._
> 
> _"That's why. That, and you did the worst thing anyone could do for the most human reason in the world." Jack gets up. He never took off his coat. "I'll let myself out. Toshiko will check on you in the morning. You won't see me for a while."_
> 
> _As he leaves, I can't help feeling I've lost something I'll mourn later. It's more premonition than sensation, and I feel it pressing on my chest._
> 
> _And then the loss of Jack piles on top of Lisa and I cry until I'm empty._

Ianto comes to himself in a flurry of recognition. _Lonely. Guilty. Angry. Ianto. Scared. Sad. Angry. Scared. Love._ "All those feelings. They're not yours. They're ... they're mine, aren't they?"

Gwint goes very still, and nothing comes forth from Jack's mouth.

"Let me give this a try. I'll say the feeling, you say the name."

"Yes."

"Lonely."

Nothing.

"Okay, how about Guilty?"

The leaves rustle in what Ianto can only describe as an agitated manner.

"You don't know how to say it." Ianto ponders his next move, and then tries, "Angry."

"Ianto."

"Okay, fair enough. Scared."

"Ianto."

"Sad."

"Ianto."

"Love."

The leaves rustle, again, harder than ever.

"Yeah, that's confusing me, too." And then he clears his mind and cultivates a feeling of peace before asking, "Why are you torturing Jack?"

"Guilty."

"Jack feels guilty?"

"Guilty."

"Not yes. So this is complicated."

The nest starts to shake and the leaves rustle, making Ianto think of frustration. And just then, there is a small creaking sound near him, and a thorn rises from one of the larger branches forming the rim of the nest.

"No. I'm not putting something like that back inside me. Makes me feel sick just thinking about it."

Gwint rustles and sways, tilting so that Ianto is nudged towards the thorn, but stopping short of making him fall on it.

"I suppose that's the closest you can come to 'please', isn't it?"

The silence this time is filled with what feels to Ianto like thinking, and then Gwint's leaves droop.

"Ah! Nothing like a bit of emotional blackmail just before teatime. A pouting tree. The things they don't tell you in school...." Then he looks at Jack's body slumped partway off the bough. "Right. If you're going to all this trouble, might as well—"

He crawls to the thorn, trying to figure out which body part to sacrifice. "Brace yourself, Gwint!" He channels his strength into his left arm and slams his hand down hard on the spike.

The pain is excruciating, but nothing prepares him for the thorn immediately curving towards the back of his hand and plunging back in, stapling the central metacarpal bone to the nest rim. He screams.

And then he can't feel anything.

There are worlds he hasn't dreamt of, and worlds he has. There is love and loss and bonding and binding – something he's never seen before but almost understands, now that it's happened to his outermost group of twigs. _Twigs? Aren't they called something else?_

There is a presence that brings unbearable light and noise into the green, woody world of Gwint. Ianto recognises it as 'Jack'. Gwint gives Jack a different name, one that Ianto cannot translate, even as a verbalised concept.

And then Gwint is placed between them, conceiving and feeling things at Ianto.

'Lonely' is divided between all of them, though Jack seems to be allotted a disproportionate share.  
'Guilty' goes to Jack, though a little of it breaks off and follows Ianto like a wisp of smoke.  
'Angry', to Ianto's surprise, bounces back and forth between him and Jack, and a bit of it sticks to Gwint with every pass.  
'Ianto' induces a wave of affection that curls around Gwint and emanates from him. Ianto can't help but be touched by that, and he can feel Gwint smile.  
'Scared' settles on all three of them, but concentrates most on Jack, whose fear is blacker and bleaker than that which blankets the others.  
'Sad' also shrouds all of them, but Jack's dose is so thick that Ianto can't make out his figure anymore.  
'Love' envelopes Ianto almost as strongly as 'Scared' does Jack, decorates Gwint and waits near Jack.

"Is this because he's dead?" Ianto's sure his mouth isn't moving.

Gwint radiates confusion – not so much at the concept, but at the fact of it, as though he's never encountered anything quite like Jack before.

"Me, too." Ianto sees the feeling waft from him to Gwint. "Do you really want him dead?"

"Not Now."

Ianto is stunned by understanding Gwint's reply as, 'Not for the last few centuries, not since I killed him the first few times, especially not since I felt You.' "Then why don't you let him go?"

"Guilty." Gwint balls up a parcel of concepts and feels the packet to Ianto.

Ianto sees/feels himself catch it and then is overwhelmed when it breaks open, spilling the contents into his psyche.

Jack overwhelmed by pain.  
Jack overwhelmed by sorrow.  
Jack overwhelmed by anger.  
Jack overwhelmed by guilt.  
Jack overwhelmed by fear.  
Jack overwhelmed by Time.

Jack overwhelmed by the desire just to die.

"He won't let you release him."

"No."

Ianto is overcome with grief.

"More." Gwint wafts a tiny, gossamer shape to Ianto.

Part of it opens up and shows him Jack held here by two threads called Ianto and Gwen.

Ianto tries to cut the threads, but the one called Gwen slips away – making it clear that he has no standing to touch it – and the one called Ianto bores into him, overwhelming him with its strength. There is also a prickly warmth in it, and a statement that he has the power to cut it for his own sake, but not for Jack's. The concept of 'Fair enough' resonates from three sources, which is when he realises that Jack is alive.

The shroud of fear is a thinner veil, now, and the love that had gathered, waiting, is suffused through it. It's beautiful, like shot silk.

Jack is Bright. He emits Life and Feeling so strongly that Gwint objects on the basis that it's the wrong time in the light cycle for all that brightness.

Ianto sympathises, which earns a mind-glare from Jack, which makes Ianto's blood run cold. "Please tell me you can't read my mind."

The images of Gwint and Jack start to vibrate, and a cloud that Ianto recognizes as Pain bubbles up from the bottom.

"Mouth or mind. Pick one! Feedback...."

Ianto feels "Sorry!" at them, and the pain cloud sulks away.

"Gwint. Why did you take him? I thought you liked him!"

Gwint radiates confused hurt at Jack and affection at Ianto.

"He offered, I accepted."

This time, the feedback is intense enough that Ianto's head aches.

"Gwint." Jack's mind-voice is so calm – not at all like the brightness of his image in the link-space. "Release him."

"Wait! Not 'til—" Ianto is thrown from the link, screaming as the thorn extracts itself from his hand. "Don't hurt him. Don't hurt him anymore!"

"Ianto. It's all right. He's not doing anything to me."

Ianto turns in the nest and looks up at Jack. His side hurts. His hand hurts. His head aches. Between throbs, he feels hungry and sick at the same time. And on top of it all, his brain hurts. The thought of Jack willingly subjecting himself to torture shouldn't surprise him, not after seeing him in the travelling show as The Man Who Couldn't Die, but it's blocking his cerebral cortex. "Right. That's good. So.... Want me to leave you two alone? Give you a bit of privacy?"

Jack smiles before really looking at Ianto. And then the smile fades, and so does his face. "What do you mean?"

Ianto huffs a laugh. "Well, I have climbed down Gwint before and survived, so I'm pretty sure I can do it again."

"What did you and Gwint talk about when I was—"

"Dead. Yes. Well, nothing much, really. Just how he knew me, and a few images of his past and, er, oh, yes! How his thoughts on killing you have changed."

Jack shakes his head. "He wants me dead. I can feel it."

Ianto would pace in frustration, if he could, but the nest isn't conducive to that. He's also not sure how Gwint would react to having that many interlaced fingers trodden on. "You said that when you're connected to Gwint, he knows everything about you and you know everything about him, right?"

"Yeah...."

"Well, I can say that you – or at least _I_ – don't know everything about Gwint when I'm connected to him. I didn't see any memories of how his people died."

"He's shielding. We all do."

"Ah, yes, the psychic superiority thing, again. Look, Tosh told me about what happened with you when you killed Mary, but I've never experienced your psychic greatness for myself. What I can say is that Gwint ... has a very different idea to yours about what's up between you, and I—" Ianto passes a hand over his forehead and is glad to be sitting. "You sure that thorn went in over my liver?"

"Let me ask...." Jack shuts his eyes and concentrates, and for a moment, it looks as though he's somewhere else, like he's arguing with someone on a secure line. And then he's back. "Gwint says he was very careful, but now he's worried about you."

"Brilliant. And I'm not allowed to talk to him directly." Ianto flexes his hand and winces. "Not that I really want to go through that, again."

"Gwint can help. There's stuff in his leaves that—"

"That'll stop me from having to see you die again, today?"

"You don't have to look." It's soft, and more because Jack looks like Ianto's just shot him, rather than like he's actually going to die.

"Yes, I do. I always do." Ianto would like to be vicious about it, but he can't. "It's what we do."

"What did Gwint tell you about me?" Jack asks after a long time.

Ianto debates with himself about what to tell Jack. "He said you wouldn't let him release you – that you wanted to die for good." His pain increases as he says that, and he finally lets himself sink into the nest. He settles back and lets his arm fall over his eyes so Jack won't see his tears. "So tired," he sighs. _So bloody useless...._

"Gwint, let me go to him."

Gwint rustles.

"No, really. I'll stay until we can talk this out, but ... let me go."

Gwint's rustle turns to a deep sigh of wind.

"Ianto, you won't want to look at this!"

"Can't, anyway. Too tired." Ianto turns over and throws his arm casually over his exposed ear. He concentrates on the sound of wind and the feel of leaves and twigs against his cheek. If he focuses enough, he can minimize the sound of Jack as the vine-like restraint – thorn – is removed from that perfect body. He can also put off thinking about whether or not to jump out of the nest and start making his exhausted way down Gwint's trunk and try to find medical care. And maybe cut that thread that Gwint had shown him.

That idea gives him more pain than he was either expecting or prepared to manage. _Won't be doing that, then._ He shuts his eyes for a moment.

When he opens them again, it is considerably darker than it had been, and Jack's holding him. It's like when he wakes up in bed with Jack at the Hub – all cramped and lumpy and Jack's always wrapped around him, anyway, but he can't imagine how he ever did without it. Maybe he's dreaming. Maybe if he closes his eyes, he'll wake up in a few minutes and he'll have dreamed the whole thing.

But that thought just proves that he hasn't. That, and the fact that wherever Jack isn't touching him, he's freezing. The breeze doesn't help. He pushes himself against Jack's warmth as much as possible.

"Ianto?"

"Jack.... What're you doing here?"

"How do you feel?"

"How long have I been out?"

"Wanna stop answering my questions with questions?"

"Pot..."

Jack sighs. "Kettle! Two hours, twenty-three minutes."

"Jesus! Am I alright?"

"That's what I was trying to find out when I asked you how you were feeling!"

"Oh. Er, well as can be expected, I suppose. I've been worse...."

"How's your side?"

Ianto can hear the mix of concern and impatience in Jack's demand. He grits his teeth and turns a bit in Jack's arms, eyes widening as he slips and doesn't hurt. "I thought you'd died too many times to kiss it and make it better."

Jack gazes at him – and then kisses him, slowly, stroking his face in the way he loves. "I have."

Ianto searches Jack's eyes. "So ... dream? Gwint? Miracle?"

Jack smiles, a little. "Gwint." He strokes Ianto's hair.

"I ... don't suppose I should probe the wound...."

"Not for another day. Then you'll be fine."

"How 'bout you? Are you going to be fine in a day?"

Jack's face, surprisingly to Ianto, doesn't change much. "Gwint told me what you talked about."

"Ah. So. Are you?"

Jack shakes his head. "We have bigger problems."

Ianto feels himself fall farther than he ever would if he just jumped out of the nest now. "Oh?"

"Gwint's dying."

That's enough to make Ianto sit up, and then his side does hurt, a little. "Why?"

Jack follows suit, sitting back against the nest rim and leaning lightly against Ianto. "I'm not sure. He can't breathe very well, and his vascular system is under stress, but it's not enough to kill him."

"Trees have vascular systems?"

"Hey, root to tip's a pretty long way when you're a thousand feet tall!"

"I am not having sex with you whilst sitting in a ... Gwint."

Jack blinks. "I'm serious! How do you think water gets from the ground to the top of the tree?"

Ianto feels a flush coming on, and is glad that it's dark. "So if it's not pollution or global warming that's killing him, what is it?"

"Like I said, I don't know. But when he released me, I got this ... ache from him. Like he needed to be with someone."

Ianto can feel the muscles in Jack's arm tensing. "What happened with Gwen's case?"

"I don't know. Gwint dumped all my tech."

Ianto feels around in his pockets. He's on the third one when Jack speaks two seconds later:

"Yours, too. He, uh, doesn't approve."

"A watering can is tech, too, you know!" Ianto shouts at Gwint's trunk.

"A watering can?" Jack's full smile makes Ianto's heart skip a beat with how much he's missed it.

"Yeah, you know, one of those things that you use to water and feed plants," shouts Ianto, pointedly.

Gwint shakes and rustles and moans in what Ianto can only categorize as a huff.

"It's no use you having a tantrum! I watered you when you were dry! I fed you when you were yellow! And I used a piece of tech to do it!"

Gwint's rustling stops. The noise and shaking stops. And then Gwint droops.

Jack looks at the branches in disbelief. "Looks like you've made an impression," he says, quietly.

Ianto focuses his gaze at a promising knot in Gwint's trunk and shouts, "Right, so you'll give us back our tech, then!"

With a sigh of wind and a massive groan of bending wood, Gwint begins to lean.

It takes Ianto a terrified three seconds – they feel more like years – to realise that Gwint is planning to bend himself in half.

"GWINT!"

Gwint stops bending at Jack's cry.

Ianto's head snaps around in time to see Jack impale his left hand on the thorn Gwint offers up from the rim of the nest. He notes that it's the same thorn through which his own conversation with Gwint had been conducted earlier. He also notes that his hand is on Jack's arm.

Jack gives Ianto a funny look before his eyes go glassy and roll almost closed. His mouth moves without sound in a language Ianto doesn't recognise.

Ianto's seen Jack go trance-like more often than he'd care to admit, and he usually finds it a bit fake.

Right now, though, Jack's face is concentrated – stripped of the mask he usually wears when he's pretending to be somewhere else but isn't, really. There's effort, vulnerability, a flicker or two of pain that coincides with the impaled hand twitching when the nerves protest.

It's beautiful, Ianto thinks, and he tries to remember where he's seen it before, and why his mind doesn't want to know.

>   
> 
> 
> _"The world will end in three years! And that monstrosity is proof!" Mad Jimmy points towards the Blowfish._
> 
> _"I'm not the proof, or even the cause. The one thing humans do well is destroy themselves. It happens all over the Universe!"_
> 
> _"So what else is new?" I mutter, as I try to sort a firing position from behind the skip that won't kill too many of the people watching the show._
> 
> _"Oh, you!" Gwen eases around the other end and shakes her head._
> 
> _I roll my eyes and risk them again._
> 
> _Mad Jimmy is shouting again. "God never crossed a man with a fish!" He points at the Blowfish. "Man has violated the natural order of God, and God is punishing him for it. The world is doomed. Repent!"_
> 
> _The Blowfish raises the bottle to, er, its lips and tilts back. "Empty! Just like your fatuous race!" It looks around. "I'm thirsty."_
> 
> _"Taff's just over the road," offers an older man in the crowd._
> 
> _"Just what we need." I shift. "More alien fish in the Taff."_
> 
> _"You're just moaning because it's raining!"_
> 
> _"As usual," we both say, and I join her laugh (quietly, of course), even though she probably means it about my supposed moaning, rather than the rain._
> 
> _A woman offers the fish a bottle of Tŷ Nant. She must be American._
> 
> _"Bluuue...." The Blowfish knocks back a quarter of the bottle before spitting it all over the woman and the five people within four feet of her. "Filthy!"_
> 
> _"That was brand new!" Definitely American. Sounds like she's from somewhere in the Northeast._
> 
> _Then the Blowfish pulls a gun on her._
> 
> _"Fuck!" Gwen gives me the signal to go round her end of the skip and gain a vantage point behind the alien whilst she draws its attention. It's our MO when dealing with a sentient criminal, especially when it's drunk. Gwen's good with drunks._
> 
> _It's all going well, and I'm almost in the right spot when the American woman catches sight of me. Before I can react, I've a scaly arm 'round my throat and a gun to my head. Fucking thing's fast!_
> 
> _"Ah! Here's Torchwood's office boy, come to save the day." The Blowfish sniffs me. "Smelling of day-old mammal. Time to grind you up into plant food."_
> 
> _"Fish can't smell!" Jack's bellow is welcome, for once. (More often, if I'm honest.)_
> 
> _I start to say, 'Yes they can,' but Jack flicks me a glare that says, 'Shut it!'_
> 
> _The Blowfish doesn't fall for it. "Oh, insults from the dashing hero who loves his toy boy!" Surprisingly, its grip on me doesn't change a bit._
> 
> _More surprising is the flicker on Jack's face. It hurts._
> 
> _"Not so much." It's out of my mouth before I can stop it._
> 
> _Jack's face changes, then, and there's more laid bare than I've ever seen. Only for once, I don't want to know what it is. And then it hardens, and I know that when he pulls his gun, he's as likely to kill me as the Blowfish._
> 
> _That's when the Blowfish lets go of me and drops its gun._

Ianto wants so much to touch Jack – to stroke that beautiful cheek as the emotions move across it – but he knows it's too risky. Touching anyone in telepathic contact is a bad idea, especially on an area that provokes a revulsive or anxious response.

>   
> 
> 
> _I'm driving. Jack's in the back, which would be all right except that I can see him in the mirror and every time he catches my eye, it hurts._
> 
> _Gwen squeezes my arm and says nothing._
> 
> _I'd kiss her for that, if I could._
> 
> _She looks around at the sound of movement from the back. "So how do we house a Blowfish?"_
> 
> _"Don't know. Never caught a live one, before."_
> 
> _"Strip it, hose it and keep it away from booze. Oh, and stay out of spew range."_
> 
> _"Lovely," Gwen and I both mutter._
> 
> _Naturally, the spew range includes the entire cell. "Ianto, I—wow!" Gwen looks me up and down. "How many suits did you go through before you put on that thing?"_
> 
> _"One and a half."_
> 
> _"You sound like Darth Vader!" And that's when the stench hits her. "Oh! That is _minging!_ "_
> 
> _"Hence the kit."_
> 
> _"That's worse than the men's room floor at The Noise on a Saturday night!" She backs away to the other side of the corridor._
> 
> _I think better of asking how she knows that._
> 
> _"Jack wants a sample of that." She points to the mess on the floor. "Says he wants to know what it's been ... eating...." Sounds like her voice is turning green._
> 
> _"Coming right up." It's fun torturing other people when you have to clean up alien sick._
> 
> _Gwen looks daggers at me and bolts._
> 
> _Lots of fun._

Ianto has no fun watching the pain on Jack's face. For a horrible moment, he flashes back to the night he lost his battle for Lisa. _"One day, I'll have the chance to save you, and I'll watch you suffer and die."_ It wasn't necessary for him to say, "And I won't lift a finger to help you." Jack heard it then. He thinks Jack still hears it.

A worse moment is acknowledging that he can do nothing to help Jack now, because this communication is necessary. Probably for everyone, including Gwint.

The worst moment is his realisation that this is not the worst pain Jack's been in since he met him, and that he has noticed this and somehow connected it back to those awful words every time the occasion has arisen. "What does that say about me?" he mouths. He can't give it voice.

>   
> 
> 
> _I hate it when Jack and I disconnect. Worse, I hate that I hate it. Jack doesn't love me. Not any more than the rest of the team, anyway. I never expected to love him. And I don't think he could ever love someone who betrayed him. Not even after he forgave me. Twice. Maybe more. Loyalty is everything to him. I want to kill that bloody fish for saying what it did. Jack and I are fine in the silence. We don't need anything said between us. We don't need anyone making noise about it._
> 
> _My hand's shaking on the door to Jack's office. That's fucking pathetic. I make it stop. Dad would be ... well, not proud, but at least he wouldn't look at me so badly._
> 
> _Yes he would._
> 
> _I shrug my suit coat into better alignment and march in. "I've got the results on that sample you wanted analysed."_
> 
> _"Thanks, Ianto." He sounds a bit more distant, even than usual. He's also buried in paperwork, and doesn't look up._
> 
> _"That's ... a lot of work." I wish I could find my feet with him._
> 
> _"Yeah. Gonna take all night."_
> 
> _I recognise the dismissal. But it's not an order. "I could help...."_
> 
> _Jack looks up. "Not this time."_
> 
> _That is an order. Hurts like hell._
> 
> _"It's not—"_
> 
> _"It's okay." I mould the smile into place. "I understand. Work to do." I nod and leave before either of us can say anything more._

Jack's eyes snap open. "Brace yourself!"

Ianto blinks. That's all it takes for it to be too late. "Jack!"

"GWINT!"

Ianto is falling amidst a giant rustling – make that _thundering_ – of leaves and branches. "JACK!"

And then he is caught 'round the waist and gasping with the pain of the wound that hasn't healed as much as he'd thought.

"IANTO?"

"I'm alright!" He isn't, really. "Just bent in half, a bit." _And looking straight down through millions of feet of whirling branches._ "What's he doing?"

"Trying to help!"

"Not sure I want his help." Ianto wants it to sound gruff, but he's barely able to hear himself. He prefers the idea that it's the noise that's interfering, rather than harsh black of pain and breathlessness that's taking him to oblivion.

"Gwint!"

The silence that follows is eerie. Ianto can't see Jack, but knows that he's talking to the tree again. As he fades to black, he thinks that the weirdest thing about his weird life is that he doesn't think it's weird, at all. Not even as he feels a sharpness in his pierced hand and realises what it is. "Not again...."

*****

_This is a forest. I'm in a forest. Not woods. Not Wales. Oh god. Oh, God! I'm sinking!_

_Oh, no, wait.... There's the bottom. I'm wading. I'm waist deep in something thick. And my body is ... it's familiar, but it doesn't feel like _me._ Where am I? Can't see for all these trees. If I could just have a look 'round—no! Why did my head turn left? I wanted to look up! Come on, head!_

It's all right, Ianto. __

_"Jack?" Only my mouth won't move._

_Jack's laughing. Why can't I see him?_

__Because you're inside me. __

_"Wouldn't be the first time." My bloody mouth still won't move._

__Time and a place. __

_I'm shivering with the thought I almost don't want to think. Almost. "Jack, what colour is the sky?"_

__Blue. Like your eyes. __

_And now my eyes won't roll._

_But then I feel Jack flinch like he's been hurt. How can I feel that? I can't even see—_

_I'm inside him. "I'm dreaming, right?"_

__Not exactly. __

_"What, then? Did you take me somewhere with your wrist strap?"_

__No tech, remember? At least, not 'til Gwint manages to pick it up off the ground and give it back to us. __

_All those whirling branches suddenly make sense and I try to grab onto something before I fall._

__Stop twitching and watch the memory! __

_"So we're on Gwint's world?"_

__See? I told you he was good! __

_A wave of leaf washes over me. How do I know that that colourfeeling is called 'leaf'? How do I know that it means amusement and approval? How do I know what a colourfeeling is, or how it moves?_

_"Nice to meet you, Gwint."_

_More leaf laps at me._

__More than a pretty face! __

_"So what are we doing here?_

__Clearing the air. __

_I have so many questions...._

__Not yet. __

_Something tells me that Jack means, 'Not ever'. But a bar of wood is suddenly at my chest, and I can't say anything. I recognise this colourfeeling. It's been there all my life, and it means forbidden. Or at least, forbidden for now. I never did like this one._

__Ianto. _Jack seems sad._ Just watch.

> "Over there! Twenty degrees northeast and ninety-five meters from our position."
> 
> Jack turns and catches sight of a simianoid shape loping away from them. "Is that the target?"
> 
> "You've got an analyser, Trainee. Use it!"
> 
> "Yes, Ma'am, Agent Zend, Ma'am!" He points the thing and calibrates it. It zaps a nearby tree, burning a hole into the bark.
> 
> The tree shivers and wails.
> 
> "Sorry!" Jack yells.
> 
> "Trainee Jix! Your target is escaping!"
> 
> Jack starts to run, only to stumble in the gluey mire as he remembers that his blaster has a five hundred-metre range. He recovers himself, aims and fires his weapon. It blows a hole through the target, which falls forward and doesn't get up.
> 
> And then the soup in which they're walking starts to bubble and turn pink, and the trees start to scream.

_"That's horrible!"_

__Yes, it was. __

_The cloud of black is another colourfeeling that I recognise._

__Back to the witness stand.

> Jack points his analyser at the spreading pink, and then at the target. "Oh, no!" He taps the screen and then hits it, hard. "Ma'am, this isn't our target!"
> 
> "What?" Zend shouts, but can't be heard over the screaming. She sloshes towards him.
> 
> He shows her the scan. "The analyser froze on the target frequency. This isn't it. I've never seen this before—"
> 
> "Code Black! Emergency Protocol Seven," she shouts into her wrist strap. She turns to Jack. "This planet is protected as critical habitat under Article Twenty-Eight of the Shadow Proclamation, and it's just been exposed to Dectrin neutraliser. You've got two minutes to grab every seedling you can find. Diverse gene pool, and stay out of the pink!"
> 
> "Yes, Ma'am!" Jack turns away from the pink and makes his way as quickly as he can to pull up at least one baby tree from every screaming parent along his side of the watery passage between tree stands. One seedling wraps its roots around its parent, but Jack pulls at it, anyway. "Come on, little guy! I know, I know, I'm so—OW! What's with the thorn?"

_I perceive only deadly pink and the poisoning of Gwint's mother. I'm screaming. Except I'm not._

_Jack can't breathe. Except he is._

_Gwint is weeping. It feels like the sort of rain you get in the woods._

__Exactly. __

_Do all trees weep?_

__Only the ones related to Gwint. __

_"BRONNNND!"_

*****

Ianto is thrown from the link and out of Gwint. The last thing he feels from the link as he begins his fall is a soul-curdling scream from Jack.

He's just giving up on surviving when Gwint catches him for the third time. That's when he realises how frightened he was. "Look, just put me on the ground or drop me, right?" It doesn't help that this arrangement of sticks and branches – which now seem to him like muscle and full of intent – has him laid back like a woman undergoing a certain sort of exam. "What's brond?"

There is no reply.

Ianto looks up and can't see Jack, whom he now reckons is about a hundred feet further up than he is, most likely in earnest and maddeningly silent communication with Gwint. Of course, he can't really tell, because the wind's picking up and it's now nighttime.

"Brond is his mate!" From the proximity of the sound, Jack is climbing down towards him. "Can you move?"

"Probably."

"Good, because we're climbing down, now."

"I've never climbed down a tree this tall!"

"No, but you climbed down Gwint before." There is a subtle weight on the main limb supporting Ianto, and Jack is twelve feet away. Ianto's echolocation has long been perfect where Jack's concerned. "And I'll help you."

Ianto accepts Jack's offered hand and scrambles to his feet and into Jack's one-armed hug. His annoyance is both stimulated and quelled by Jack's trembling. As he returns the embrace, he feels the necessity of what he's about to do and recasts his mind. "At least this way, I can't see how far off the ground I am," he says into Jack's neck.

"Exactly," Jack murmurs against Ianto's ear. "And I'll be at your back, and Gwint will give us climbing aids. All we have to do is get to his trunk."

All of a sudden, twelve feet seems like that many light years.

"I'm not going to let you die!" It's choked into Ianto's ear. "No way. I promise."

Ianto lets Jack press against him, even with the gust of wind that makes them sway. "Okay. I trust you." He gives Jack a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. "Shouldn't we get on with it?"

"Yeah. I'll have you down in no time."

"I'd like it to take a little longer than that...."

Jack snorts. "Good point. Shall we?"

"Yep."

"Okay, come on. I'm hanging on to a branch above me, so we're safe. Just ... follow my feet to the trunk. That's it ... I'm with you ... just another few feet...."

"Easy for you to say...."

"You're doing great, Ianto...."

"Are we there, yet?"

"Almost."

Ianto would feel better if Jack laughed at him or told him off. He resets his mind again, and remembers back to his boyhood climb, and to how elated he was to be so high up – a hundred feet, Mam said – and how good it felt to be able to get up there and back down all by himself. "Good." And suddenly, with Gwint under his feet and Jack at his back, he knows he can do this. Even though those last four feet to the trunk feel more like four miles.

"We're here," says Jack.

"I know."

"Okay, so we're gonna get cosy, here." Jack positions himself almost directly behind Ianto. "Give me your right hand."

Ianto fumbles backwards and slightly away from his body.

Jack takes Ianto's hand and places it gently on something that feels like a thick peg. "I'm going to be right against your back the whole way down, and you are going to follow my feet and hands with yours. It's a good thing we're the same height."

"Yeah. So this is going to be like being in bed at the Hub, but with pitons...."

"Something like that," says Jack, with a warm laugh.

"I can do this."

"Never doubted it," Jack manages. "You ready for this?"

"Let's do it."

"Ooh, I love it when you get all growly!" Jack says it as he's wrapping himself around Ianto for the descent, and his voice that close is the purest form of concentrated sex.

Which gives Ianto two pieces of inconvenient information: he desperately wants a shag, and he desperately needs a wee.

"Hey.... You okay?"

"Soon as I'm on the ground."

"Got it. I'll get you there safe and sound."

"And soon."

"And soon. And so will Gwint. Okay, big steps, now. Stay with me...."

Ianto follows Jack's foot. It's a lot easier than he expected. He and Jack have always fit well, physically, and the memory link gave him a small idea of what it was like to _be_ Jack. Or Jix. Or whatever his name really is.

Jack is solid and sinuous against his back, making it necessary for Ianto to think about something else. Flashes of the morning's fight crash into his mind.

>   
> 
> 
> _"You never fucking told me you were immortal!"_
> 
> _"You never asked!"_
> 
> _"You wouldn't have told me!"_
> 
> _The wind seems to go out of Jack. "I didn't want you to know."_
> 
> _"You didn't trust me."_
> 
> _"I did trust you!" Jack doesn't turn around, and the way he's snarling, I'm glad._
> 
> _"I betrayed you." I wish I didn't feel so shaky. At least I sound steady. "At this point, I think I can pay for that on my own."_

Ianto's foot slips and Jack flattens him against Gwint.

"Ianto?" There is fear and effort in Jack's voice – in all of Jack. Ianto can feel it pressed up against him.

"Sorry. Got distracted." Ianto grasps Gwint's bark, and the large, rough thorn that has just made itself known by his right hand. "Thanks, Gwint!" He can't shout it, but he's pretty sure that Gwint hears him, or at least can connect via one of his wounds.

"You gotta stop thinking so hard." Jack's trying to joke, but he only ever sounds that way when he's terrified.

"Sorry.... Just keep going, all right? Can't keep doing this much longer...."

"Okay. Okay, but stay with me Ianto, please. I don't want to lose you tonight, okay?"

Ianto wishes he could turn and kiss Jack, though he isn't sure how he could matter so much to him. "I'll be good, I promise."

Jack shifts to enclose Ianto a little more. "Thank you," he whispers. He doesn't kiss Ianto, but Ianto doesn't feel the need when that huff of sound says everything.

>   
> 
> 
> _"I really don't get why people have to say those three words to someone. I mean, if you have to say it, it can't be that strong, right?"_
> 
> _"No. Of course not." It's become second nature to agree with Jack on this, even though I want to lump him up or break it off with him every time he says it. The person who's least interested in the relationship has all the power in it, and Jack already has more power than anyone should._
> 
> _"What's wrong? Something bothering you?"_
> 
> _"Hmm? Oh, no. Just ... not used to being called out on a domestic. That's more Gwen's former line of work."_
> 
> _Jack snorts. "Yeah, well, just wait 'til you see thirty members of the Vantoon Event getting bent out of shape over their offspring marrying out of order. My jawbone's still hurting from that one."_
> 
> _"How long ago was that?" I can't help it. Every time Jack starts talking about something or someone from his past, I get sucked in. He knows it, too._
> 
> _"That was last night while you were asleep. The Impresario had a hell of a triple hook!"_
> 
> _"Why didn't you wake me up? I could've helped!"_
> 
> _"Because you needed the sleep and I ... didn't."_
> 
> _"You haven't slept properly in three days, and I know you need more than that."_
> 
> _"I've had ... stuff ... on my mind." Jack says this a lot, only not like that. Not with that hesitation in the middle of it._
> 
> _"How can I help?"_
> 
> _"You sound like a receptionist."_
> 
> _"I am a receptionist."_
> 
> _Jack finally puts down the sample box and the particle blaster. "You know I don't mean it that way."_
> 
> _"And you know that I don't mean it like a receptionist."_
> 
> _"Point taken." Jack sighs. "Look, Ianto.... You do help. You're always there for me, and I value that more than I can say."_
> 
> _"I should never have asked." I start clearing up the mess of the day. "Should these remains be archived under 'dangerous' or 'lethal'?"_
> 
> _"'Lethal'. And they're not remains. Those guys are just dormant, and they're gonna be cranky when they wake up."_
> 
> _"Which will be...?"_
> 
> _"In about three days. We can separate 'em when they've re-formed."_

"Ianto? Ianto! Talk to me! What are you thinking about?"

"Erm ... sorry ... just that tub of guests in cell two. They're due to re-form in a couple of days, and I'm worried I won't be prepared."

"Good. Just hold that thought 'til we get safely down to the ground, and work with me, okay? It'll go a lot quicker and I won't be as sore."

"Right. Sorry. How far have we got to go?"

"I'd say about another hundred and fifty feet, or so. We'll halve the time if you focus on the work here, rather than back at the Hub."

"I'll do my best."

A hundred and fifty feet is about a hundred and fifty steps down a tree with Jack Harkness holding him steady and declaring that he cares about the life and death of Ianto Jones. As drained and thoroughly uncomfortable as he is right now, Ianto takes that bit of light and as much of that responsibility upon himself as his condition will allow.

Five minutes later, he is on the ground, rushing away from Jack to relieve himself on a piece of ground that he hopes isn't inhabited by Gwint's roots. He's glad it's dark, both so that Jack can't see him and he can't see the condition of his own body. Blood in his urine would tip him over the edge right now. He feels that can wait until he's at A&E, and preferably out of Jack's sight.

In the distance, he can hear fragments of Jack talking to Gwen. He realises that he's gone mental when he hears something about shipping a hundred and fifty foot tree from a stately home to the middle of nowhere.

He zips up and sits down a few feet away, relishing the feel of terra firma under his bum. He realises he was drifting when Jack drops down beside him and hands him his earpiece and all the other bits of tech Gwint had confiscated.

"Worry about the inventory later. It's all replaceable."

"So am I."

"Don't say that! Don't ever say that!"

There's just enough light in the sky – and Ianto is surprised to recognise it as dawn light – to reveal the glint of a tear making its way down Jack's cheek.

"Jack?"

Jack swipes at his eyes. "I couldn't tell you."

Ianto blinks. "Couldn't tell me what?"

"About my ... about how I can't die."

Ianto nods.

"It's not because of you."

Ianto shoots a sideways look at Jack.

"Well, okay, maybe it was, a bit. At first. You were Torchwood One, and then I started to trust you, and there was...."

"Lisa."

Jack squeezes Ianto's shoulder and lets that hand slip down Ianto's back and rest there. "It was because of Angelo."

Ianto tenses. "Who's Angelo?"

"He was this man I met. Decades before you were born." Jack goes silent, like he's losing his nerve.

Ianto waits.

Jack says nothing.

"Did you love him?"

Jack's hand tenses against Ianto's back. "Madly."

It's hard to hear in ways Ianto didn't expect and can't understand. But something tells him not to run from Jack. He asks, though he's pretty sure he knows and probably doesn't want to hear the answer. "What happened?"

Jack takes in a noisy breath. "He killed me." He stares straight ahead, but it feels like he's looking right at Ianto. "A lot."

"Shit...."

Another noisy breath. "He let the bad guys experiment on me. And then he couldn't take it anymore and helped save me."

Ianto is grateful for his strong stomach. "That would explain a few things."

Jack presses his fingers into Ianto's back, turning him. Stopping him. "It's not that I don't ... care, Ianto." His voice is thick, his eyes less guarded – almost pleading, but only for a second. "I just...."

The fear on Jack's face reaches Ianto as nothing else has. "It's okay." He's trembling with cold and pain and exhaustion, or perhaps the raging terror that always hits him when he thinks about how much he loves Jack, and how utterly void his life would be if he lost what they have together. Even if he isn't sure how much they really have.

And then he's in Jack's arms and feeling the whuff of Jack's emotion warming his frozen cheek. And for once, Jack is cold, too – or at least he's shivering. He kisses Jack's cheek, his lips, his brow, his mouth. He pours everything he hasn't dared say into it, knowing he'll never mention Jack's tears or his own certainty that there will never be anyone else for him, even if he does manage to live a normal lifespan.

The pain in his side forces Ianto back to reality. "Do you remember where you put the SUV?" he murmurs against Jack's kiss-warmed lips.

Jack kisses him as though he doesn't want to stop, but then does. "Yeah. Let's go home."

Ianto strokes Jack's face. "A&E first."

>   
> 
> 
> _"Jack?"_
> 
> _Whenever Gwen sounds like that, I know we're going to get something interesting. I look over her shoulder. She doesn't mind, but she doesn't smirk either, so whatever she's got probably isn't a casual sort of 'interesting'._
> 
> _She enlarges the image._
> 
> _I see a child caught in a tree on a windy day._
> 
> _Jack appears on Gwen's other side, and it's all I can do not to bolt for the archives. "What you got?"_
> 
> _"Child in a tree." She points to the screen._
> 
> _Jack leans towards it. The tree is flailing in the wind and the child looks terrified. "So?"_
> 
> _"So does anything stand out about that tree that might make it Torchwood business?"_
> 
> _Jack leans in more. "Uh, no, not really. It's not eating the kid or talking, right?"_
> 
> _Gwen sends the image to the bigger monitor and zooms out a bit. "Look at the other trees."_
> 
> _I look. "There's no wind!" I check for other tree incidents._
> 
> _"Weather report is for a calm, sunny day." Gwen pulls up the weather scan on another monitor just as another alert flashes. "Jack, a mountain biker in Cwmcarn Forest says he got knocked off his bike by a tree there. He's in hospital in Newport."_
> 
> _"I know that place."_
> 
> _Jack turns towards me. "Newport, or the forest?"_
> 
> _"In this case, I meant the forest."_
> 
> _"Right. Here's the interesting bit," Gwen says, a bit too loudly. She hates it when Jack and I aren't getting on._
> 
> _I move closer to Gwen's screen. "Did that tree just—"_
> 
> _"—snatch the kid off the ground?" Jack looks strange, like he recognises something. "Was that mountain biker hurt, besides being knocked off his bike?"_
> 
> _Per protocol, Gwen sends the data to my workstation so they can keep watching the child in the tree._
> 
> _I rifle through the hospital computers and find the right one. "The A &E report says he was stabbed through the forearm. The victim says the tree did it."_
> 
> _Jack turns to me again. "How clean was the wound when he came in?"_
> 
> _"No trace of infection found, and the wound was healing fast."_
> 
> _"Jack, we really must help that boy in Abergavenny!"_
> 
> _"Yeah, and while you're doing that, I can go interview Mr Davies about that encounter in Cwmcarn Forest." Maybe I'll get a chance to visit the forest again, while I'm at it. Couldn't hurt to get a bit of Torchwood business done and visit my old camping grounds. Not more than usual, anyway._
> 
> _"Newport's on the way to Abergavenny," Gwen points out. "I could drop you and Jack off—"_
> 
> _"No way."_
> 
> _We both look at Jack like he's gone mad._
> 
> _"The situation at this – what's that park called?"_
> 
> _"The Morgan Truelove Experience." Gwen can't really keep a straight face as she says it._
> 
> _Jack and I look harder at the screen._
> 
> _"I've never heard of a stately home with a name like that," he says. "Not on Earth, anyway."_
> 
> _"I won't ask." I start to gather my essential gear from my workstation._
> 
> _"It's not a stately home," says Gwen. "At least, not anymore. Now it's a theme park."_
> 
> _"With a big, weird, child-snatching tree by a pretty pond, which means that two of us have to go there, and one of them has to be me!"_
> 
> _Gwen and I look at each other. We both love it – and hate it – when Jack goes all dashing hero on us._
> 
> _It's not hard to do the maths: Child in danger, large crowd gathered, good PR needed, me and Jack not getting on. "Like I said, I know Newport and Cwmcarn Forest. I'd be best used there."_
> 
> _I don't think I'll ever forget the look on Jack's face before he nods and says, "Let's go!"_

"Ianto? You back with us?"

Ianto blinks. The nest rim feels very hard and cold, and there's a small, cold thorn in his arm. He wonders why he can't feel Gwint's presence, under the circumstances.

But the person he sees bending towards him isn't Jack, even though he's positive it was Jack who spoke. "Ianto? You've been out for a long time, sweetheart. Do you know where you are?"

"Gwint...."

"I'm tall, but not a thousand feet."

Ianto blinks at the familiar, warm snicker. His eyes start to focus. Walls. A window. Bed rails. Gwen. "Not Gwint, then."

"Nope, not Gwint."

Ianto turns his head towards Jack. "Newport?"

"Yeah."

"Everyone all right?"

"Yeah, but I've gotta go see a woman about a tree." Jack bends down and kisses Ianto's forehead.

For some reason that he can't fathom, Ianto recognises it as an 'I wish I could stay' kiss, especially when Jack bestows a lingering caress on his cheek.

"See you tomorrow," Jack murmurs, before he turns and strides away in a flurry of Coat.

"Where's he going?"

"Buckingham Palace," says Gwen.

Ianto blinks again, sure that he's still dreaming but knowing he's not. "He's not going to have Gwint chopped down, is he? He can't! Jack...!"

Gwen prevents him from getting up. "I'll explain everything if you promise to stay in bed until the doctor says you're fit to go home, and no, he isn't going to have Gwint chopped down!"

Ianto lies back, a bit surprised by how tired he is. "I'm listening."

"Right. So Gwint's mate—"

"Brond."

"Oh, yes, Jack told me Gwint had mentioned her. Anyway, she was the one who took that child. Little hellion, he was. He nearly tried to carve me up like he did her!" She brandishes a child's pocketknife and smiles. "But not any more."

"Respect," Ianto manages, a bit feebly.

"Anyway, Morgan Truelove had her dug up and brought from Cwmcarn Forest sixty years ago and planted her by the pond. She said she liked the pond at first, that it reminded her of home and let her flex her feet, but that she never liked being separated from Gwint."

"Yeah, he's dying."

"So's she. And she's only a hundred feet tall! All that direct sunlight and fertiliser and pruning...." Gwen shakes her head.

"So why is Jack seeing the Queen?"

"Because Morgan Truelove refuses to let her be dug up and moved back to Gwint. Even with Jack and me at his throat and threatening him with all the charges we could try in court and a few more that we couldn't, all he can think about is how much money 'that strange tree' generates for him every year. He's got pictures of her on every piece of rubbish he makes. She's become his logo."

"So he owes her royalties, then."

"He doesn't believe that she's sentient, or at least he won't admit it. His ex-wife thinks otherwise."

"So much for living up to his name."

Gwen laughs through her nose. "Hadn't even thought of that! Anyway, Mr Truelove said he'd only let us move her if the Queen, herself, ordered him to. So Jack's going there for tea."

"Prince Phillip won't be there, will he?"

Gwen's eyes go wide. "God, I hope not!"

"Tea? How long have I been out?"

"About five hours. Everyone's marvelling over how fast you heal."

"Must've overdone it."

"Overdone what?"

Ianto feels the redness rushing into his ears. "Nothing. Just a dream."

"No it wasn't." Gwen's voice is gentle. And because it's genuine and personal, it's irresistible.

"Remaking myself in Jack's image." He shoots her a look.

She nods and drops her eyes. "You want to be careful with that." It's more confession than advice.

"There are worse role models." Ianto says it quietly, hiding the pain of it.

"And worse people to love." Gwen takes his hand. "Hard as it is with him."

Ianto squeezes her hand.

"I know you keep secrets, Ianto."

Ianto tries to escape, but Gwen holds on.

"But – and I don't know if this makes any sense, but you've just – I don't know, you've just felt more real, somehow, since Jack came back. Like you've grown into yourself. Tosh said so, too."

"Owen said I was just a shag."

"Owen was an idiot." Gwen winces and takes a breath. "So's Jack," she adds, a bit too quickly.

"Can't say I'm any better."

Gwen smiles a little. "All men are idiots when it comes to love."

"Except Rhys," they both say.

And then they both laugh.

"For what it's worth," says Gwen, after a moment, "it's pretty clear that Jack loves you. He just doesn't wear it on his face quite as much as y—as we do." She pats his hand and lets go. "How do you feel?"

Her change in tone and subject makes Ianto a bit dizzy. "Fine, as long as I don't have to climb a tree."

"Right. I'll just go see about getting you out of here, yeah?" She nods and bolts before Ianto can reply.

>   
> 
> 
> _I'm on a journey. I'm walking down the road, my toes multiplying, lengthening, squishing into the mud, mingling with my friends and my mate. Our children cling and play on my feet. It is time for Light Quest, and it is my fulfilment to root Source in their spirits. I have felt but a few star cycles, yet already I have grown what my parents felt to me. When we reach our destination, we will bend and kiss the warm road and shower our children with its wetness. We will welcome soft-sharp Flying Ones and let them nest and raise their young. We will bask as they nourish each other with those who feast on our skin. We will feed on Renewal as Old recharges in time for Return._
> 
> _I stretch my hundreds of arms. My children laugh at me and feel to me that I am old. I feel leaf to them and refrain from feeling to them that I have remained still for a cycle that they might live and grow until they breach the surface of Source._
> 
> _Disturbance. Strange Energies are Here. Strife. Air is upset. Surface is hurt. Swimming Ones flee. 'Poison' they scream. My feet burn. I cannot respire. I am dying. It is too soon—_

Ianto wakes up screaming. Only he's not screaming. He's panting and whispering, "No!" His chest is constricted, like there's a vice clamping it.

"Shh.... You'll reopen your wound."

"Can't breathe...."

"Oh. Sorry."

The vice loosens and Ianto doesn't turn around. "I thought you were gone tonight."

Jack strokes his chest. It is soothing, chaste, sleepy. Exactly what Ianto needs. "I got an early chopper home."

"Did you miss me?" It's not as light as he was hoping. Ianto still can't shake off the images and feelings that woke him. And then he realises he's actually shaking.

Jack kisses the back of his shoulder. "Yep."

Ianto reaches to embrace Jack's arms.

"Tell me about your dream." As softly as it's spoken, it isn't a request.

"I don't think it was a dream. More like a memory."

Jack folds himself closer around Ianto. "Whose?"

"I think it was Gwint's mother's. I was dying when I woke up."

Jack freezes for a fraction. "I am so sorry." His voice is shaking.

"It's not your fault."

"Yes, it is." Jack starts to withdraw.

Ianto grasps Jack's arm. "Tell me how."

Jack shakes his head against Ianto's shoulder. "I can't."

Ianto takes Jack's tense hand in his own and kisses it. "Speak to me, Jack."

"I'm not who you think I am."

"Are you a Hoix?"

"No."

"Then we're good."

Jack shakes against Ianto – silent laughter is what it feels most like – and stills. "I lied to Zend."

"I thought so."

"No, you didn't!"

"All right, I didn't. But I'm not surprised."

"Yes, you are!"

"Maybe a bit. After all, I was inside your mind, and I didn't get any sense of, er, _you_."

There is a tense silence.

Ianto pats Jack's hand and keeps hold of it. "Finish the story."

"There was this ... I suppose you'd call him a broker. He said the people he represented wanted a favour and were willing to give me something I wanted in return."

Ianto has an idea from the sob near Jack's voice what that might be. He strokes Jack's arm, but remains silent.

"I asked what favour and what they had. He said they wanted one of their operatives killed, and they had information about Gray."

Ianto nods and pulls Jack's arm a little further around him.

"I didn't know the guy would be carrying Dectrin neutraliser. They said he'd stolen something valuable from them and they wanted him dead as a deterrent."

Ianto nods. "Did you know what Dectrin neutraliser was?"

"No. It was top-secret, need-to-know information."

"And you didn't know until you needed to. What about Gray?"

Jack's breath hitches against Ianto's back. "They lied."

Ianto just strokes Jack's arm. He doesn't say a word.

"Talk to me, Ianto."

"It wasn't your fault."

Jack takes a breath.

"And I'm very glad you're back."

Jack halts, mid-breath.

"But only if you'll be here when I wake up trying to scream, again."

There's an awkward, untimed space in which neither of them moves a voluntary muscle, and then Jack deflates.

Ianto hugs Jack's arms a little tighter. "I'm sorry. About earlier. I was just...."

"Just what?"

"Being a p— Being stup—" Ianto takes a huge breath, because this is hard. And then he thinks of Jack. Not Jack the liar, or Jack the conman, or Jack the torturer, or even Jack the braggart. He thinks of Jack the man who suffers and dies and comes back and stays sane and fights on and chooses to stay on Earth, in Cardiff, with him, even though it all hurts and nobody on earth is worthy of such sacrifice. "Feeling insecure."

Jack strokes Ianto's arm, as best he can reach it. "I know." He tugs a bit on Ianto. "Come here."

Ianto turns, and finds himself in an embrace that is both loose and frighteningly intimate.

Jack looks into his eyes. "I am with you. I don't want to be with anyone else. And even if I can't say the words, it doesn't mean I don't feel them."

The kiss is soft and devouring. When it ends, Ianto starts to speak, and stops himself.

"It's okay. We're safe in the Hub, the Rift is quiet and neither of us is in danger of dying. You can say it."

"Did the Queen say we could move Brond?"

Jack's eyes widen, and then he bursts into silent laughter and hides his face in Ianto's chest. "Yeah," he says, when he can. "Day after tomorrow, when it isn't raining." He looks up, a stupid smile on his face.

Ianto thinks it's one of the best things he's ever seen. "You're a good man, Jack." He kisses him before the smile can disappear.

Jack caresses Ianto's cheek, an unreadable look on his face. "So are you, Ianto Jones."


End file.
